Michael Bay Directing ‘Time Salvager’ Sci-Fi Movie for Paramount

Although he’s currently heading into production on his Benghazi drama 13 Hours, Michael Bay is already lining up his next directing project: the sci-fi film Time Salvager, based on the novel by Wesley Chu. The project sees Bay once again teaming up with Paramount, the studio behind the director’s Transformers franchise, which Bay also produces.

The Wrap reports that Bay has signed on to direct Time Salvager, a film that takes place in the near future, when humans have colonized space, but our time is still running out. One convicted criminal is selected to travel back in time and collect the resources required for our survival — but there’s a catch: he can’t do anything that will significantly change the present, or the future.

There have been talks of Bay directing Transformers 5, which Paramount has tentatively scheduled for a 2017 release. That could very well change, as Akiva Goldsman and his writers room (which recently added two women to the staff) formulate new ideas for the direction of the franchise.

Here’s the official synopsis for Time Salvager from Amazon:

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one’s hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity’s demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

James is a chronman, undertaking missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. The laws governing use of time travel are absolute; break any one of them and, one way or another, your life is over. Most chronmen never reach old age; the stress of each jump through time, compounded by the risk to themselves and to the future, means that many chronmen rapidly reach their breaking point, and James Griffin-Mars is nearing his.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets Elise Kim, an intriguing scientist from a previous century, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, and in violation of the chronmen’s highest law, James brings Elise back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, somehow finding allies, and perhaps discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

As of now, Bay is in production on 13 Hours, starring John Krasinski and Pablo Schreiber.